144 years ago the Sagrada Familia began and for more than 100 years it has been the undisputed symbol of Barcelona. If the Eiffel Tower defines Paris and the Empire State defines New York, there is no doubt that what defines Barcelona, and almost Catalonia, is this basilica which has recently become the tallest religious building in Europe. Next Tuesday, the 10th, it will be a century since Antoni Gaudí, the architect who dreamed it up and designed it, died. In fact, he dedicated 43 years of his life to it and is buried there. Pope Leo XIV will commemorate his centenary with a mass, in which he will also bless the Tower of Jesus, the central and tallest of the complex.

One week before the Pope's visit to Catalonia, many are looking for ways to capitalize on the excitement to make a profit. To the point that the internet has been filled with offers to rent a balcony from which to watch the popemobile arrive in exchange for a few hundred euros. "Rooftop Sagrada Família, direct view Pope Leo XIV", promises an ad on Wallapop. "Unique location that allows you to enjoy from the same space all the key moments of the event: the popemobile's passage through the Rosselló/Sicília corner just before entering the Sagrada Família, the illumination of the Tower of Jesus and a drone show over the temple". The same ad says it would be an "ideal place for media, broadcasts or a private VIP experience". To specify the price of renting this penthouse for a single day, you need to contact the user who published the ad and negotiate the rate.

On June 7, 1926, Antoni Gaudí was run over by a tram in Barcelona. The injuries sustained would eventually cause his death. One hundred years later, this dossier celebrates his life and work.

That the Pope comes personally to Barcelona and has the tower of Jesus Christ of the Sagrada Família blessed in Spanish only has one explanation: the Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE) is Spanish first and then episcopal.

La Sagrada Família is already warming up its engines for the arrival of Pope Leo XIV with only 20 days left until his visit to the Catalan capital. It will be one of the highlights of Gaudí Year, which commemorates the centenary of the architect's death throughout this 2026. The Pope will officiate a Mass in his memory inside the temple and will then go outside to bless the tower of Jesus Christ, which at the beginning of the year was crowned with the cross that has made it the tallest religious building in Europe, with a height of 172.5 meters. Given the great expectation to attend the Eucharist, the general director of the Sagrada Família Construction Board, Xavier Martínez, has specified that there will be 4,000 people inside the temple and 4,000 more outside who will be able to experience live the ceremony officiated by the Pope.

The immersive exhibition created with more than 600,000 recyclable balloons will transform, starting this Thursday, the Inmersa space, located in the Poblenou neighborhood, into a large-scale visual and sensory universe. The experience promises to surprise visitors with a journey full of color, light, movement, and scenographies that turn ephemeral art into a different cultural proposal.

"Madam Minister, this unease is neither new nor isolated. That is why, when education professionals mobilize, they are not just defending working conditions. They are defending time and resources to support students, the educational and emotional attention that children need, and the possibility of sustaining a quality public school." This is a fragment from the letter that Affac – an organization representing 2,400 parent associations of public schools and institutes – has sent to the Minister of Education Esther Niubó. Affac sent it this Monday during a new strike day in the education sector, in which teachers blocked the entrance to Sagrada Familia for two hours as part of the protests in Barcelona and Barcelonès.

After seeing humanoid robots running and winning the Beijing Half Marathon this weekend, anything is possible. Humanoid robots are no longer that broom handle with legs that stumbles and trips spectacularly, but they already have enough coordination to be running for 50 minutes faster than a person. The applications of the invention, military, labor, social, are so great that we must resort to the classic “the future is already here”. As I said, robots surpassed people, which is no longer news if we think that machines have been surpassing us in computing power for a long time. Therefore, the news is once again a geopolitical warning: the Chinese race in robotics is also going very fast. And us with Trump, the Strait of Hormuz and Rodalies.The progressive festival that Sánchez brought to Barcelona this weekend had a curious epilogue: The President of Brazil, Lula de Silva, went to pray for a while in the main nave of the Sagrada Família, where he gifted himself “a moment of peace, prayer and reflection in a place that inspires unity and hope”. This moment is very well, considering that politics does not grant any respite. Example: while Sánchez was gathering the left-wing parties in Barcelona, who was Feijóo meeting with? With the Venezuelan Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado. This morning, Machado was the guest at an informative breakfast in Madrid. And who introduced her to the audience? Felipe González, who runs in the opposite direction to Pedro Sánchez in everything.Finally, in more predictable territory, the Government and ERC are presenting today the Consortium for Investments in Catalonia, which will be the body responsible for monitoring the compliance of State investments in Catalonia. The investment consortium was one of the agreements included in Salvador Illa's investiture pact. This consortium must monitor the number and destination of investments, but also their execution, to prevent the amounts that Spanish governments, whether from PP or PSOE, allocate in budgets from being an approximate reference: less than half of the planned investments are executed. If you think about it coldly, how are we to see ourselves: creating an organism to ensure that the government complies with the budgets, that is, with the law. Hopefully it works, but allow me to express all my skepticism, based on real facts: governments make agreements, but senior officials, or unions, or a PP-VOX majority, will come along afterwards and decide.Good morning.

Jordi Faulí (Barcelona, 1959) joined the Sagrada Familia's technical office in 1990, when the temple was not yet covered. Three years later he was appointed assistant director architect. And in 2012 he became, succeeding Jordi Bonet, the seventh director architect since Antoni Gaudí. Among the milestones of his direction are the completion of the naves and the culmination of the Tower of the Virgin Mary and the Tower of Jesus.

How many old photo albums lying around houses hold pictures taken on rooftops? Grandparents or parents would climb up there with those cameras that had limited technology (they were called "portrait machines"), searching for the light that was lacking in the apartment so the photo wouldn't come out dark, and a simple background that the street couldn't provide. I suppose they must have looked for their own horizon reference point in each location. In Barcelona, ​​it was clear: the Sagrada Família, with those first four bare towers of the Nativity façade on Sardenya Street, which were the image of the city for almost forty years. The image was so fixed that for many Barcelonans, those four spires were enough.

"Not everyone will be able to say, 'I was there when it was being built.'" This was one of the comments made by members of the Premium Club At the start of last Sunday's guided tour of the Sagrada Família, places had been sold out for days (another tour will be scheduled soon), demonstrating that this modernist temple—with elements of contemporary architecture and sculpture—which remains the tallest building in Barcelona and the tallest church in the world, attracts tourists not only from around the globe but also from within Spain. Participants learned little-known details about this unique building, which is a "bible in stone" (it contains numerous elements that explain episodes from the life of Jesus). Macarena Bergada, an art historian and guide at the temple for the past fifteen years, explained to the attendees that the Sagrada Família project began in 1882 with the aim of creating a neighborhood parish church, promoted by a religious association and under the direction of an architect who was not Antoni Gaudí. A year later, Gaudí took over the project and completely transformed its design. The brilliant architect from Reus retained virtually none of the ideas from the original project.

The Gaudí Year 2026 is getting closer. This morning, the Sant Pacià University Athenaeum (AUSP) organized the first event of the commemorations of the centenary of the death of Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926) at the Sagrada Família. The event consisted of a mass in the central nave of the basilica presided over by Cardinal Joan Josep Omella, Grand Chancellor of the AUSP, and the inaugural lecture for the 2025-2026 academic year was given by the director of the temple's works, Jordi Faulí. A prayer at Gaudí's tomb in the crypt before Faulí's speech was one of the most intense moments of the day.

The Sagrada Família is finalizing the work to complete what will be the icing on the cake of the events commemorating the centenary of Antoni Gaudí's death. Although it won't be open to visitors until later, the viewing cross that will crown the Sagrada Família's tallest tower will be ready in June 2026, coinciding with the anniversary of the death of the architect who designed the basilica. This figure, 17 meters high, 13.5 meters wide, and weighing 100 tons, will bring the tower of Jesus Christ to a height of 172.5 meters (it currently measures about 155 meters) and make the Sagrada Família the tallest religious building in Europe. It will be one of the milestones of a temple that still faces, however, the challenge of the staircase. An issue that the construction board acknowledged this Thursday will end up in court.

Stores of souvenirs where Messi, Lamine Yamal, and Pablo Escobar jerseys coexist in perfect harmony alongside flamenco dresses, Osborne Bull underwear, and star-studded motifs mixed with Spanish flags. Small shops that promise to be open 24 hours a day, and restaurants serving paella and sangria as their signature dishes, have gradually displaced butcher shops, fruit and vegetable stores, and leather goods stores. Of the traditional neighborhood shops, only the signs remain, now bearing witness to a square kilometer overflowing with tourism: the Sagrada Família neighborhood.

It's official. The Sagrada Família is the tallest building in the city of Barcelona. The temple has reached the top spot on this podium after reaching 155.58 meters in height, just above the 154 meters of the Mapfre Tower and the Hotel Arts, the two buildings that crowned the sky of the Catalan capital since 1992. The milestone reached by Anskyline of Barcelona, where, at the moment, the only taller building outside the urban area is the Torre de Collserola, at 288 meters.

First: give a name to the obelisk in the Plaza del Cinc d'Oros. Barcelona is the only city with an obelisk dedicated to nothing and no one, orphaned, impersonal, extraterrestrial. I don't think the current mayor would mind dedicating it to Liberty, for example, but I'll question it given his phobia of what he calls "conflictive chimeras." I'm urging the issue simply because names do things (they themselves did the same with El Prat Airport). We should also address the names of General Mitre, Juan de Borbón, Isabels and Cristinas, and various Bourbon-style names, the foreign Dos de Mayo or Bailén, and the unbearable absence of a street or square for Salvador Dalí.

The High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) has sentenced the foundation that promotes the Sagrada Família for firing an employee the day after the end of her protective period due to having a child. The judges ruled that the termination of her contract was void and that the foundation's conduct violated her fundamental rights to equality and freedom from discrimination. The ruling emphasizes that the 12 months following the birth of a child guarantee special protection, and during this period, dismissals without objective cause are void and not merely unfair.

The day after a tram on line 30 ended his life on Gran Via - Bailèn, Antoni Gaudí began his journey to the altar. "A saint has died in Barcelona!" he posted. The Voice of Catalonia, and all the newspapers of the time filled him with praise such as "the unique monk of a unique monastery" where he resided with "medieval humility." A crowd accompanied his coffin. Although the twisted forms of Modernisme were unbearable for the Noucentista tastes of the time ("Gaudí's genius has excluded him from his time," wrote Francesc Folguera), his contemporaries were aware of the genius of Gaudí's work. The great Francesc Pujols said in the New Magazine"Give him bricklayers and laborers, stone and cement, and the purse that rings if Barcelona is good, and let him do it, because he already knows what you're up to."

Little by little, new details are emerging about what the Sagrada Família's Jesus Christ tower will look like. This Thursday, it was announced that Italian multimedia artist Andrea Mastrovito (Bergamo, 1978), who lives in New York, has won the competition to design the Lamb of God (Agnus Dei), which will be at the center of the cross crowning the tower and visible through the windows of the upper arm. For Mastrovito, "the Lamb suspended between earth and heaven symbolizes the relationship between matter and energy, between the Son and the Father." "Inspired by contemporary cosmology, it incorporates the luminescent inscription of John 1:29, transforming his proposal into an image of the Trinity and the origin of all reality," say sources at the Sagrada Família Basilica. Specifically, this verse reads: "The next day, John saw Jesus coming toward him and exclaimed, 'Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!'"

The Sagrada Família Construction Board Foundation has awarded €3.5 million in co-financing grants to 94 projects from various non-profit social organizations. This is the second call for proposals from the Social Action Fund (FAS), an initiative that allocates a portion of the funds raised by the church to help vulnerable groups. The funding has grown compared to the first edition (2023), but so has interest, as €2.3 million was raised and 56 projects were funded.